180 AUSTRALIA 



less, except for the plaintive cry of the scrub fowl or 

 the rustle of the dry twigs stirred by a puff of wind.' 

 This scrub is composed, in the main, of three or four 

 bushy forms of eucalyptus, crowded together. Each 

 shrub consists of a close crop or bundle of long, thin 

 shoots, of the height of a man, ending in bunches of 

 long dull-green, leathery leaves. A small conifer, callUrie, 

 occurs occasionally in the bush : elsewhere, the strange 

 melaleucas, the leafless casuarinas, and a few others 

 with heath -like or vertical leaves, appear where the 

 scrub opens. There is no grass, and hardly any flowers 

 on the bare, yellow or rust-coloured soil. Seasons may 

 pass without altering the aspect of the Mallee, to which 

 no exact analogue is known in any part of the world. 



The Mulga appears to correspond in some measure 

 to the acacia semi-desert of Africa; but its aspect is 

 more varied, its definition more vague than that of 

 either the Brigalow or the Mallee. The name is probably 

 applied to the semi-desert scrub which borders on the 

 desert and penetrates into it. Thus the western margin 

 of the great plateau with a rainfall under 10 inches, 

 the eastern foot of the same tableland from south to 

 north, and the strip of higher ground with hill-ranges 

 that separate the great sandy desert on the north 

 from the great Victoria desert on the south and enclose 

 many tracts of pure desert, appear to answer to the 

 description of the Mulga territory. 



Mulga appears to be made up of a scattered scrub of 

 thorny acacias, with a ragged carpet of grass. Some- 

 times it is said to crowd into dense thickets ; sometimes 

 it resembles a low meagre sward studded with bush 

 acacias : in this form it is the equivalent of the marginal 

 vegetation of the Sudanese Sahara ; sometimes it occurs 

 as oases in the desert. Among the good fodder-grasses 



